Marilyn McCord Adams

Marilyn McCord Adams was born on October 29, 1943, in Philadelphia, into a Presbyterian family that valued both intellectual rigor and Christian commitment. Her father was a philosophy professor, and the household atmosphere of serious inquiry would prove formative. She completed her undergraduate work at the University of Illinois, then pursued doctoral studies in philosophy at Cornell University, where she wrote her dissertation on William of Ockham under the direction of Norman Kretzmann. It was at Cornell that she met Robert Merrihew Adams, a fellow philosophy student who would become both her intellectual partner and husband for nearly five decades.

The early years of her career were spent navigating the intersection of rigorous philosophical training and deepening theological conviction. She held positions at Princeton University, UCLA, and Yale Divinity School, establishing herself as one of the foremost interpreters of medieval philosophy while simultaneously feeling called toward ordained ministry. This dual vocation created tensions that would define much of her life's work. In 1987, she was ordained as an Episcopal priest, a decision that represented not a departure from philosophical work but its completion. For Adams, the life of the mind and the life of faith were never separable vocations.

Her move to Oxford University in 1993 as the first woman to hold the Regius Professorship of Divinity marked the culmination of her academic career, but it also coincided with personal crisis. Robert's struggle with severe depression and eventual suicide in 2006 forced Adams to confront the problem of horrendous evil not merely as a philosophical puzzle but as lived reality. The grief was compounded by institutional difficulties at Oxford, where her American theological sensibilities and advocacy for the ordination of women created ongoing friction within the university's traditional structures.

Her Writing and Theological Contribution

Adams began her scholarly writing in the 1970s with technical studies in medieval philosophy, particularly focused on William of Ockham and Duns Scotus. Her early work established her reputation as a careful historian of medieval thought, but even these technical studies revealed her underlying theological concerns. She was not merely interpreting medieval arguments about universals or divine foreknowledge; she was excavating a tradition of Christian thinking that took both divine sovereignty and human suffering with complete seriousness.

Her mature theological writing emerged in the 1990s and 2000s with works like Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God and Christ and Horrors. These books addressed what she termed "horrendous evils" — sufferings so severe that they threaten to render a person's life not worth living. Adams argued that traditional theodicies, which attempt to justify God's permission of evil by appealing to greater goods, are inadequate to address the worst forms of human suffering. Instead, she proposed that God's response to horrendous evil is not justification but identification and defeat — the Incarnation represents God's entry into human horror, and the resurrection represents its ultimate transformation.

This theological position was both deeply orthodox and radically innovative. Adams remained committed to classical Christian doctrines about God's goodness and omnipotence, but she insisted that these doctrines must be interpreted through the lens of God's solidarity with victims rather than abstract philosophical categories. Her final work increasingly focused on the cosmic scope of redemption, arguing that God's love extends to all creation and that ultimate salvation will be universal. This position placed her at odds with much traditional Christian teaching, but she maintained it was the only conclusion consistent with belief in God's infinite love and power.

Who should read Marilyn McCord Adams: Readers grappling with profound suffering who find conventional explanations of divine providence inadequate, and those seeking to understand how classical Christian doctrine can address contemporary questions about evil and redemption. She is essential for anyone interested in the intersection of rigorous philosophical thinking and pastoral theology. She is not for those seeking simple answers or comfortable reassurances about divine justice, but for those willing to follow theological reasoning into difficult territory.